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Five Government Programs That Musk’s Government Efficiency Agency Could Put On The Chopping Block

Published

7 months ago

11 minute read

From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

By Robert Schmad

Federally-funded progressive pet projects and wasteful spending alike could be on the way out if Elon Musk succeeds in his quest to improve the administrative state’s efficiency.

Right-of-center policy experts previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation that they hope Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency will improve federal data collection practices and cut wasteful expenditures. Musk took to X on Thursday to express his openness to reeling in federal spending on transgender research and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.

In July, the United States of America’s debt surpassed $35 trillion for the first time in history, with the balance expected to exceed $36 trillion in the near future.

Over the past year, the DCNF has collected dozens of examples of wasteful or otherwise strange programs the Biden-Harris administration has pumped public funds into, feeding the deficit. Here are five examples of what could come under scrutiny from Musk’s efficiency agency.

1. Improper Payments

The Biden-Harris administration is on track to have paid out over $1 trillion in improper payments by the time President-elect Donald Trump takes office and the Department of Government Efficiency gets to work in January 2025. Federal guidelines define an improper payment as any disbursement “made by the government to the wrong person, in the wrong amount or for the wrong reason.”

Common examples of improper payments include erroneous payments made through the Medicaid and Medicare systems, misallocated COVID-19 aid, benefits paid to dead people and taxpayer funds lost to fraud. Large sums of improper payments are not a problem unique to the Biden-Harris administration. During Trump’s first administration, the government disclosed $814 billion in inflation-adjusted improper payments.

Not all improper payments are totally lost after being sent out. The Biden-Harris administration managed to recover about $51 billion of the $235.7 billion it erroneously disbursed in 2023.

Both parties have expressed concern about the magnitude of improper payments put out by the federal government, with a bipartisan group of legislators in the House pushing the Improper Payments Transparency Act, a bill introduced in May that would require the president’s budget request to identify common payment errors and formulate ways to address them.

2. Tax Dollars Funding LGBT Activism Abroad

Spokespeople for the State Department have previously told the DCNF that promoting LGBT inclusion in other countries is a “foreign policy priority” of the Biden-Harris administration, a statement supported by materials the agency publishes.

Under President Joe Biden, the State Department and The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have spent millions working to fund transgender surgeries, bankroll LGBT activists and engage pro-transgender in social engineering abroad.

USAID, for instance, gave $2 million to Asociacion Lambda, a Guatemala-based organization, to both engage in pro-LGBT activism and to provide people with “gender-affirming care,” federal records show. Asociacion Lambda attempts to influence elections in Guatemala and meets with government officials to engage in advocacy.

The State Department, meanwhile, funded the production of a play in North Macedonia where God is portrayed as a bisexual that has constant sex with hermaphroditic angels and communists are painted in a positive light.

“Americans are far from agreeing on how to deal with race, sex, and ‘gender’ in schools and workplaces,” Heritage Foundation senior research fellow Simon Hankinson wrote in a 2022 report. “Even when U.S. national consensus is there, restraint is always necessary in attempting to convince other nations that one’s own values should be theirs. The U.S. must balance the likelihood of convincing potential allies with the likelihood of hostile reactions to perceived interference or ‘cultural colonialism.’”

Other programs the Biden-Harris administration approved to push homosexuality and transsexuality abroad included bankrolling the creation of 2,500 “LGBTQI+ allies” in India, using tax dollars to “foster a united and equal queer-feminist discourse in Albanian society,” staging a film festival in Portugal featuring incestual and pedophilic themes, funding gay pride events across the globe and deploying public funds to support the work of “queer” Muslim writers living in India.

3. ‘Indigenous Knowledge’ Grants

In November 2022, the Biden-Harris administration released a memo defining indigenous knowledge as “a body of observations, oral and written knowledge, innovations, practices, and beliefs developed by Tribes and Indigenous Peoples through interaction and experience with the environment” that “is applied to phenomena across biological, physical, social, cultural and spiritual systems.”

From 2021 to 2023, the Biden-Harris administration approved more than $831.8 million in grants that encouraged the use of indigenous knowledge in service of achieving the Biden administration’s goals.

The Department of Commerce, for instance, earmarked $575 million in June 2023, asking third parties to utilize indigenous knowledge to help mitigate the impact of weather events caused by climate change. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, meanwhile, made an estimated $18.75 million available in August 2023 for grantees to apply “Indigenous knowledge methods,” alongside other approaches, as part of a program intended to test experimental methods of reducing drug overdose.

The 2022 Biden-Harris administration memo ordered agencies to “recognize and, as appropriate, apply Indigenous Knowledge in decision making, research, and [their] policies.” Agencies were also instructed to consult with Indian spiritual leaders and not to assume that indigenous knowledge is incorrect when “Western” science contradicts it, with the memo calling science a tool of oppression.

“When I start hearing things about how there’s this other dimension where, you know, the animals interact with humans at a different level of reality, that’s just not a thing,” City University professor and biologist Massimo Pigliucci told the Washington Free Beacon, in reference to their reporting on the subject. “You can believe that and you have the right to believe it but it’s not empirical evidence.”

4. DEI at the VA and Beyond

As hundreds of thousands of veterans were stuck on benefit waitlists, Biden’s Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) took at least a dozen actions aimed at expanding DEI within the agency.

The VA had 378,000 claims from veterans that had been pending for at least 125 days at the end of 2023, according to the agency. In September 2021, shortly after Biden took office, the VA had just 210,854 claims that had been backlogged for the same length of time.

While the number of disabled veterans waiting on support grew, the Biden-Harris VA was focused on doing things like establishing an Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access Council, working on making its contractors more racially diverse and engaging in marketing campaigns aimed at reaching out to the “LGBTQ+” community and female veterans.

The VA is far from the only federal department that leaned into DEI in recent years as the various branches of the federal government collectively spend millions per year on diversity trainings. The Department of Health and Human Services alone spends tens of million per year on DEI programs and staff. Roughly a third of the funds disbursed by the National Science Foundation promoted DEI, according to a recent Senate Commerce Committee report.

5. Inventing Gay Landmarks

America’s national parks faced an estimated $23.3 billion maintenance backlog at the end of the 2023 fiscal year, according to a July report from the Congressional Research Service. While public parks languished, the National Park Service (NPS) diverted public funds to its “Underrepresented Communities Grant Program,” which is designed to diversify America’s historical landmarks to better include racial and sexual minorities.

During Biden’s tenure in office, NPS paid an array of government agencies and nonprofits to seek out “historic” LGBT locations to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places. When NPS approves a landmark to be added to the National Register of Historic Places, its owner becomes entitled to special tax breaks, with many state and local governments offering special grant programs for such locations.

NPS, for example, paid out $75,000 to Washington State’s Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation for it to identify an “outstanding representation of queer history” and nominate it to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The service has spent $7.5 million on its Underrepresented Communities Grant Program since 2014, with Congress apportioning $1.25 million for the 2024 iteration of the program.

America’s national parks are billions of dollars behind on maintenance related to roads, buildings, water systems and campgrounds, according to the congressional report.

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Trump: ‘Changes are coming’ to aggressive immigration policy after business complaints

Published on June 12, 2025

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From The Center Square

By

“So we’re going to have an order on that pretty soon – we can’t do that to our farmers and leisure too, hotels, we’re going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.”

President Donald Trump said Thursday that changes are coming to his aggressive immigration policies after complaints from farmers and business owners.

“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump wrote in a social media post Thursday morning. “In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”

Later Thursday, Trump made it clear that businesses need workers.

“Our farmers are being hurt badly. They have very good workers – they’re not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be great. And we’re going to have to do something about that,” the president said.

He added: “We can’t take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don’t have, maybe, what they’re supposed to have.”

Just how Trump may change his approach to immigration enforcement remains unclear, but he said he wants to help farmers and business owners.

“You go into a farm and you look and people, they’ve been there for 20 or 25 years and they work great and the owner of the farm loves them and you’re supposed to throw them out. You know what happens? They end up hiring the criminals that have come in, the murderers from prisons and everything else,” Trump said.

Trump said changes would be coming soon, but gave little detail on how policies could change.

“So we’re going to have an order on that pretty soon – we can’t do that to our farmers and leisure too, hotels, we’re going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.”

In a later post on Truth Social, Trump said illegal immigration had destroyed American institutions.

“Biden let 21 Million Unvetted, Illegal Aliens flood into the Country from some of the most dangerous and dysfunctional Nations on Earth — Many of them Rapists, Murderers, and Terrorists. This tsunami of Illegals has destroyed Americans’ Public Schools, Hospitals, Parks, Community Resources, and Living Conditions,” the president wrote. “They have stolen American Jobs, consumed BILLIONS OF DOLLARS in Free Welfare, and turned once idyllic Communities, like Springfield, Ohio, into Third World Nightmares.”

He added that deportations would continue: “I campaigned on, and received a Historic Mandate for, the largest Mass Deportation Program in American History. Polling shows overwhelming Public Support for getting the Illegals out, and that is exactly what we will do. As Commander-in-Chief, I will always protect and defend the Heroes of ICE and Border Patrol, whose work has already resulted in the Most Secure Border in American History. Anyone who assaults or attacks an ICE or Border Agent will do hard time in jail. Those who are here illegally should either self deport using the CBP Home App or, ICE will find you and remove you. Saving America is not negotiable!”

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The carbon tax’s last stand – and what comes after

Published on June 12, 2025

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From Resource Works

By Stewart Muir

How a clever idea lost its shine

For years, Canada’s political class sold us on the idea that carbon taxes were clever policy. Not just a tool to cut emissions, but a fair one – tax the polluters, then cycle the money back to regular folks, especially those with thinner wallets.

It wasn’t a perfect system. The focus-group-tested line embraced for years by the Trudeau Liberals made no sense at all: we’re taxing you so we can put more money back in your pocketbooks. What the hell? If you care so much about my taxes being low, just cut them already. Somehow, it took years and years of this line being repeated for its internal contradiction to become evident to all.

Yet, even many strategic conservative minds could see the thinking had internal logic. You could sell it at a town hall. As an editorial team member at an influential news organization when B.C. got its carbon tax in 2008, I bought into the concept too.

And now? That whole model has been thrown overboard, by the very parties had long defended it with a straight face and an arch tone. In both Ottawa and Victoria in 2025, progressive governments facing political survival abandoned the idea of climate policy as a matter of fairness, opting instead for tactical concessions meant to blunt the momentum of their foes.

The result: lower-income Canadians who had grown accustomed to carbon tax rebates as a dependable backstop are waking up to find the support gone. And higher earners? They just got a tidy little gift from the state.

The betrayal is worse in B.C.

This new chart from economist Ken Peacock tells the story. He shared it last week at the B.C. Chamber of Commerce annual gathering in Nanaimo.

Ken-Peacock-slide B.C. Chamber of Commerce annual gathering in Nanaimo. carbon taxKen-Peacock- B.C. Chamber of Commerce annual gathering in Nanaimo.

What is shows is that scrapping the carbon tax means the poor are poorer. The treasury is emptier.

What about the rich?

Yup, you guessed it: richer.

Scrubbing the B.C. consumer carbon tax leaves the lowest earning 20 percent of households $830 per year poorer, while the top one-fifth gain $959.

“Climate leader” British Columbia’s approach was supposed to be the gold standard: a revenue-neutral carbon tax, accepted by industry, supported by voters, and engineered to send the right price signal without growing the size of government.

That pact broke somewhere along the way.

Instead of returning the money, the provincial government slowly transformed the tax into a $2 billion annual cash cow. And when Mark Carney won the federal election, B.C. Premier David Eby, boxed in by his own pledge, scrapped the tax like a man dropping ballast from a sinking balloon. Gone. No replacement. No protections for those who need them most.

Filling the gas tank, on the other hand, is noticeably cheaper. Of course, if you can’t afford a car that might not be apparent.

Spare a thought for the climate activists who spent 15 years flogging this policy, only to watch it get tossed aside like a stack of briefing notes on a Friday afternoon.

Who could not conclude that the environmental left has been played. For a political movement that prides itself on idealism, it’s a brutal lesson in realpolitik: when power’s on the line, principles are negotiable.

But here’s the thing: maybe the carbon tax model deserved a rethink. Maybe it’s time for a grown-up look at what actually works

With B.C. now reviewing its CleanBC policies, here’s a basic question: what’s working, and what’s not?

A lot of emission reductions in this province didn’t come from government fiat. They were the result of business-led innovation: more efficient technology, cleaner fuels, and capital discipline.

That, plus a hefty dose of offshoring. We’ve pushed our industrial emissions onto other jurisdictions, then shipped the finished goods back without attaching any climate cost. This contradiction particularly helped to fuel the push to dump carbon pricing as a failed solution.

The progressives’ choice was made once the anti-tax arguments could no longer be refuted: to limit losses it would be necessary to deep six an unpopular strand of the overall carbon strategy. This, to save the rest. That’s why policies like the federal emissions cap haven’t also been abandoned.

To give another example, it’s also why British Columbia’s aviation sector is in a flap over the issue of sustainable aviation fuel. Despite years of aspirational policy, low emissions jet fuel blends remain more scarce than a long-haul cabin upgrade. The policy’s designers correctly anticipated that refiners would never be able to meet the imposed demand, and so as an alternative they provided a complex carbon credit trading scheme that will make the cost of flying more expensive. For those with a choice, nearby airport hubs in the United States where these policies do not apply will become an attractive alternative, while remote communities that have no choice in the matter will simply have to eat the cost. (Needless to say, if emissions reduction is your goal this policy isn’t needed anyways, since the decisions that matter in reducing global aviation emissions aren’t made in B.C. and never will be.)

I’m not showing up to bash those who have been genuinely trying to figure things out, and found themselves in a world of policy that is more complicated and unpredictable than they realized. Simply put, the chapter is closing on an era of energy policy naïveté.

The brutally honest action by Eby and Carney to eject carbon taxes for their own political survival could be read as a signal that it’s now okay to have an honest public conversation. Let’s insist on that. For years now, debate has been constrained in part by a particular form of linguistic tyranny, awash in terminology designed to cow the questioner into silence. “So you have an issue with clean policies, do you? What kind of dirty reprobate are you?” “Only a monster doesn’t want their aviation fuel to be sustainable.” Etc. Now is the moment to move on from that, and widen the field of discourse.

Ditching bad policy is also a signal that just maybe a better approach is to start by embracing a robust sense of the possibilities for energy to improve lives and empower all of the solutions needed for tomorrow’s problems. Because that’s the only way the conversation will ever get real.

Slogans, wildly aspirational goal setting and the habit of refusing to acknowledge how the world really works have been getting us nowhere. Petroleum products will continue to obey Yergin’s Law: oil always gets to market. China and India will grow their economies using reliable energy they can afford, having recently approved the construction of the most new coal power plants in a decade amid energy security concerns. Japan, which has practically worn itself out pleading for natural gas from Canada, isn’t waiting for the help of last-finishing nice guys to guarantee energy security: today, they are buying 8% of their LNG imports from the evil Putin regime.

Meanwhile, we’re in the worst of both worlds: our courageous carbon tax policy that was positioned as trailblazing not just for B.C. residents but for the world as a whole – climate leadership! –  is gone, the poorest are puzzling over why things feel even more expensive, and nobody knows what comes next.

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